ECAL / Christofle in Paris

This is the opportunity to discover the projects created by the students of the Masters in Design and Luxury Industry during a workshop with Xavier Perrenoud.

Since 2009, Christofle has been a partner of the MAS-Luxe (Master in Design and Luxury Industry) started by Pierre Keller, Director of the ECAL/University of Art & Design Lausanne, and headed by Augustin Scott de Martinville.

Together they follow the productive road of this creative challenge that is each time taken up with brilliance and enthusiasm by young students from around the world. For the 2011 workshop, led by the designer Xavier Perrenoud, Christofle asked the students to reflect on a subject it holds dear: a gift for a christening or birth, and more generally on childhood.

Christofle is known for its silver tumblers, egg cups, napkin rings and cutlery sets for babies. These beautiful objects are imbued with emotion, and are symbols of cultural and family traditions which accompany the receiver throughout their life. Traditional and even almost institutionalized objects, the question was how to reinvent them, and how to retain the timeless quality of silver whilst bringing something lighter, more poetic and humorous to the design. The ECAL's Master of Design and Luxury Industry students did so with great sensitivity, regarding this demanding brief with an out-of-the-box, playful and tender approach. The result is 13 unexpected and surprising creations, all filled delightfully retro nostalgia but at the same time steeped in the inventiveness and creative universe that says they are truly a part of their own era. The fruit of many long months of creative work and development, these objects will be presented exclusively within the framework of the Designer's Days in Paris, and some of them will later be produced as part of Christofle's collections.

ECAL/Christofle
Opening friday 17 June 2011, from 7pm to 11pm
16 to 20 June 2011 (10.30am to 7pm)
Christofle, 9 Rue Royale, Paris